Blog 10-Teaching At the Intersections/Being a Good Ally

 Title: Teaching at the Intersections

Author: Monita K. Bell

Title: 5 Tips for Being a Good Ally

Author: Franchesca Ramsey

Monita K. Bell argues in Teaching at the Intersections that every person is composed of multiple intersections, which are unique to the individual and determine their privilege and or oppression in society. “Intersectionality refers to the social, economic, and political ways in which identity-based systems of oppression and privilege connect, overlap, and influence one another.” 

This reading, along with Allan G. Johnson's work in The Privilege, Power, and Difference, presents the idea that the multiple oppressive categories or “intersections” that comprise a person build upon each other. For example, in Teaching at the Intersections, Nicole was judged by her teachers for her race and for the simple fact that African Americans do not do as well as their counterparts in school. However, there are so many more characteristics than race alone that put people into this oppressive status. “To fully and adequately support Nicole, an educator must see her situation through an intersectional lens: recognizing that race-, gender-, and class-related circumstances are contributing to her achievement issues.” To resolve why Nicole and many other students are not where they need to be, one must examine the entire picture to identify the problem. Nicole is failing due to the compounding issues of being black, low-income, and female. 

To resolve this disparity,  Monita Bell, along with Allan G. Johnson, believes we need to be educated about the privileged and the oppressed, acknowledging where we fall. As a teacher in Teaching at the Intersections describes, “Every day kids enter our class, there’s an opportunity for them to be empowered or oppressed. When I don’t consider intersectionality and what they might need, I run the risk of oppressing my kids. ... When we stop seeing our kids as whole people—as whole, nuanced people, with context to gender and race and class—we stop seeing them as real people.”This is the idea of recognizing that you may interact with someone like Nicole, who is oppressed and faces significant odds against her in successfully completing school. Acknowledging where she needs assistance as an individual to meet her specific goals is the only way to truly help a situation like this. As Lisa Deplit points out in The Silenced Dialogue Power and Pedagogy in Educating Other People’s Children, schools are designed for the success of middle-class families. Therefore, the oppressed and those not in the culture of power struggle. A male, middle-class student, who statistically may be white, typically does not face the issues that Nicole has of having to assist her mother in raising two younger siblings. This is why, as nurses and educators in the school system, we cannot simply label a child but must dig deeper into their lives and see the world through their lens.

In helping to aid marginalized groups, 5 Tips for Being a Good Ally provided some examples. I appreciated how she made the analogy of helping build a house when you've never built one before. In summary, you need to understand your place in society, practice more listening than speaking, and support marginalized groups. In light of this video and the reading above, I was inspired to share the article "Anatomy of an Ally," which ties in with being an intersectional ally as a teacher in schools. Being an ally is not as complicated as it may seem. The common theme in all these readings is really about opening your heart, listening, and seeing life from a different perspective.